For the past century, the population has increased, has migrated across countries and has started to concentrate in metropolitan areas, resulting in larger concentrations of people.
People generate on average 3.5 pounds of waste per day, and average 1 passenger car tire per person per year. For years waste was simply buried in land fills and forgotten. As land becomes scarcer for such ventures, many cities are finding themselves paying to haul the waste great distances out of their cities to available land. In some cases it is now necessary to literally ship waste across countries to available space.
Laws now mandate reduction in waste volume, which slows the problem but does nothing to solve it long term. Some municipalities have instituted burning of waste in old land fills. This is now suspect, as the release of toxic dioxin is becoming evident.
Municipal waste along with the tires may have the following makeup; for example, moisture 20.2%, paper 29.1%, yard waste 7.5%, metals 7.4%, glass 6.6%, food 3.4%, plastic 5.7%, miscellaneous 3.8% and tires 16.3%.
The approximate breakdown of a typical ton of waste would have the following pounds of these materials: water 436, paper 628, yard waste 162, metals 156, glass 142, food 72, plastics 125, miscellaneous 82, tires 196.
Since each person generates approximately 3.5 pounds per day of garbage and one tire per year, the problem grows annually, far beyond any known technology. The practice of burning has slowed the moving about of the piles, but recent reports on the levels of dioxin may soon curtail this method of volume reduction.
There is an almost desperate need for the reduction in volume of municipal waste. Current federal and state laws mandate acceptable levels of waste disposal, but have no technology that has come close to helping meet the mandated levels. Landfills are still the predominate answer. Work continues on the volume issue, and attempts to build areas that are safe from odor, leakage, and vermin. However, as population centers grow, the pile over there becomes the pile over here.
While there have been attempts to get people to segregate the various items in the assortment of waste, sorting has had a spotty performance. Once in a land fill, various components react quite differently. Some decompose; others just lie in preservation. Newspapers buried 30 years ago were dug up and found to be completely readable. Tires have been banned from many sites due to volume and slow decomposition. Long standing needs exist for solutions to municipal waste and tire disposal.